Dennis Hastert is the first to raise the issue of gentrification: "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed."

For what its worth, Voice of the White Housedescribes part of a conversation overheard at a tony Washington club:

"It is well known here that the Bush family and many of the top advisers at the White House are racists but instead of detesting Jews, in this case, they all detest blacks. Their rationale, aside from their view of racial superiority, is that blacks are all 'welfare queens, unwed mothers and drug dealers.' It was the very firmly stated view of the host that it was better for everyone that New Orleans was under water for the time being.

In that way, we were told (and I was not the only person in the dining room who heard all this), this served to 'chase out the niggers' and permit Bush-supporting businessmen from buying up the soon-to-be condemned sodden houses for five cents on the dollar from friendly insurance companies (which one of them was a CEO of) and put up an enlarged and very profitable combination of industrial park and office building section. The money for this would, naturally, come from government grants which a terrified Congress (Mid Term elections are coming) had just voted for and the contracts to demolish the wrecked low-income slums would go, as a no-bid contract, to another stellar Bush supporter."

From Professor Hex, "What the terrorists have learned this week". Also see JY's note at Talking Points Memo:

"I have a question that no one has raised so far. Wouldn't part of any homeland security preparation be the handling of refugees? Virtually any serious terrorist attack (explosion, nuclear, biological) would entail a large number of displaced persons. Wasn't anything done along these lines? I would have thought we would have pre-positioned refugee resources (tents, MRE's, water purification, generators, emergency medical care) near major population centers in the event of mass exodus. Am I crazy?"

Terrorist planners are watching with glee as the New Orleans debacle unfolds.

Via Left Hook, Laura Bush's photo op - where she was to preside, like some medieval queen, over the handing out of food to starving refugees - was drawn out, no doubt with long videos of her sympathetic caring, leaving the starving in line before covered trays of food while they politely waited for Her Majesty to appear (see more photo op news here).

The National Guard interrupted the evacuation of the critically dangerous Superdome to evacuate the guests and staff of the uncomfortable but not dangerous Hyatt Hotel (you have to wonder why the Hyatt people were still there, especially as the official line is that anyone still remaining was there due to their own fault).